


Ineffable (Dreamers)

by InfinityIllusion



Category: Bleach
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, POV Outsider, a third on the Tatsuki/Orihime/Rukia, and pervading it is the friendship between Ichigo and Tatsuki, this is about half on the UraIchi relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityIllusion/pseuds/InfinityIllusion
Summary: Tatsuki and Ichigo meet up every so often to catch up, chat, and maybe rant a little about their respective partners.UraIchi week 2019: Day 3 Outsider POV





	Ineffable (Dreamers)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is late....oops :/
> 
> Also, this was not quite what I was going for, but if I wrote it all out it'd be way, way longer and I currently don't have the patience or the muse (I got about half way, realized it was mostly friendship-centric for Tatsuki and Ichigo, and wrote this bit instead).
> 
> (but, consider: Tatsuki and Ichigo friendship!!!!!! ON SCREEN!!!!!)

* * *

“Tatsuki,” Ichigo says, sliding into the chair in front of her.

“’Sup,” she replies, before taking a long draw on her incredibly sweet Starbucks.  It’s some new promotional, limited edition flavor for hanami and she’s not entirely sure what to think of it.

Better what she’s drinking than Ichigo’s chocolate monstrosity.

“You get that every time we meet up, and I’m still not sure there’s any actual coffee in it.”

Ichigo scowls, “Screw you.”

She laughs, “Nah, I’ll leave that up to you and your boyfriend, thanks.”

Every time, every goddamn time, Ichigo blushes and gets a slightly dopey look on his face. “Shut up.”

“Mhmm.  What’s he done this time?  Has he built a time machine so you can go geek out about Shakespeare in Shakespeare’s time yet?”

“No, god, don’t give him any ideas!  With my luck we’d be stuck there until it came back around to modern day!”

Tatsuki laughs, but lays off teasing about time travel.  She’s met Urahara Kisuke – the first time, when he opened a technically semi-experimental portal to allow Ichigo, Sado, and Ishida to go save Orihime from the clutches of a Shinigami with a god-complex.  Tatsuki has no interest in baiting the man into attempting time travel (even if the reason he’d do it in this case would be pretty sweet.  Not her cup of tea, but sweet nonetheless).

“Alright, alright, Urahara-san hasn’t built you any time machines, and I won’t bring it up to him.”

Ichigo glares.

Tatsuki raises her hands in surrender.

“So, you gonna tell me why you’re here to bitch this time, or are you just here to catch up around shinigami insanity?”

“And every time you say it out loud, out in the open, I expect to be assassinated,” Ichigo mutters. And yet, they’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now.

“On the upside, if they killed you, you’d just get right back up and kill them back.”

“Thank you, Tatsuki, for your pragmatism,” Ichigo says with an eye roll before petulantly slurping his…she’s not actually sure it’s still a drink at this point, more a combination of chocolate and milk and more chocolate, and did she mention chocolate?

Tatsuki can’t help but mentally add, ‘and that’s only if Urahara-san didn’t get to your erstwhile assassins first.’

“So?  What’s your scientist done today?”

Ichigo launches into an explanation of what is apparently basically the internet, but for Shinigami and Arrancar that flies over her head, in part because she cares about Ichigo and his happiness and so she cares about Urahara-san and his experiments, but also.  It’s the internet.  She listens closely enough to make some comments and ask a few questions, and to bring home the knowledge to Orihime and warn Rukia (even if the internet, once she was introduced to it, is something for which Rukia has been petitioning for _years_.  She once tried to take a computer back to her place in the Seireitei, thinking the internet would go with it), because the internet will be a major change for the shinigami.  And make paperwork deadlines that much tighter for the seated officers, lieutenants, and captains.

Ichigo and Urahara-san had been dancing around each other more or less since that disaster-filled situation that ended up with Ichigo getting his powers back.  Even now, Tatsuki feels guilty about how little time she’d spent with Ichigo when he’d lost his powers.  But Ichigo, at least, realized around that time that, yeah, Urahara-san was pretty, and also damn was he competent.

Tatsuki can’t say she doesn’t see the appeal, in principle, and after knowing Urahara-san for years, now. Urahara is competent and smart and just Ichigo’s kind of dorky and dumb.  They’re both dramatic.  Ichigo would deny it to his dying day, but Tatsuki has known him since they met in karate class, and for all that she’s been mostly on the outskirts of his life in recent years, she’s caught enough.  They’re both fighters (she’s seen them sparring, on occasion.  It’s basically foreplay to them, and really makes Tatsuki wonder at the man Ichigo grew up to be).

She’s glad for Ichigo, that he’s found someone as smart as him, as competent, as protective.  She’s glad he’s found happiness, considering how often he was teased for seeing ghost when they were especially little, how the whole thing with the demented butterfly man went, how much the Shinigami have asked of him. She’s also selfishly glad that the person he’s found happiness with isn’t Orihime or Rukia, but that’s mostly because she’s in love with them herself (and she’s still a little stunned some days that their relationship works as well as it does, what with Rukia being in Soul Society so often).

They set up these coffee dates as a chance to make sure they keep in touch, and actually have something of the friendship they’d flirted with as kids and later as high schoolers, when Ichigo, Orihime, Sado, and Ishida (and their various other friends) weren’t saving the world for the living and the dead.  Or Rukia, who has never let Ichigo forget that he literally threw her almost immediately after saving her from execution, because it prompts Tatsuki into making jokes about knowing how to treat a lady, and it makes Orihime scold Ichigo about “there being other ways to handle people.”

It’s nice to see Ichigo laughing, and (fondly) ranting.  Urahara-san is clearly good for her friend – he’s not scowling so much, he’s more relaxed, and for all that Ichigo has been very clearly proud and defensive of his hair, he’d never done much with it.  Now he’s wearing it a little longer, and manages to ignore the stares he gets.

Tatsuki can admit that some of it probably has to do with there not being school rules or expectations for him to have black hair, especially when he works with people with white or green or blue hair.  But she’s pretty sure Urahara-san’s fascination with it is probably also a contributing factor, considering how he always runs his hands through it whenever he gets a chance. It’s adorable, and kind of hilarious.

She hopes Ichigo and Urahara-san go to the high school reunion Orihime’s in the process of planning, because the reactions would be fantastic.  Although Ochi-sensei might put Urahara-san through the wringer in terms of interrogation and a shovel talk.

“So, are you and Urahara-san coming to the reunion Orihime’s planning?” Tatsuki asks after Ichigo winds down.

He blinks, “Uh. I guess? I mean, I’ll go, since Inoue is planning it, but I don’t know if Kisuke will come, because of the whole internet thing.”

“And you don’t want Ochi-sensei to get ahold of him for a shovel talk?”

Ichigo groans and buries his head in his hands, “Why did you have to remind me?”

Tatsuki cackles.  “Because it’s hilarious.  She decided if you weren’t going to show up to class, she’d show up to you.  I think she’s effectively the weird big sister/aunt you never knew you had.”

“Thank you, for that mental image.  It’s not enough I have Kuukaku, and Yoruichi-san, you’re adding Ochi-sensei?”

“Does she not still message you and run into you every so often to catch up?” Tatsuki raises an incredulous eyebrow.

“Yeeees…”

“She’s been added.”

Ichigo gives up on trying to hide his face with his hands and just slumps forward into the table.  “Why is this my life?  I already had to deal with Yoruichi-san.”

Wow, he’s somehow kept this from Kuukaku-san and Yoruichi-san knows?  Now that’s a powder keg ready to blow.  Something else to tell Rukia, if only to make sure that no one else, including her, sets it off.

“Too bad, if you’re coming, you’re going to have to.  Otherwise I’m sure she’d just pop by the Shouten to say hi.”

“Nope, alright, fine. I’ll mentally prepare myself and Kisuke.”

“Good, otherwise I’d have to see what I could do to beat you up for upsetting Orihime.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes.

They’ve settled, a little, as adults.  The lack of major threats to Soul Society (and to Karakura and the various realms) has helped, but so has stable relationships, romantic or otherwise.  Ichigo, and Tatsuki, herself, are happy, if not in the way she expected when she first saw the teary momma’s boy Ichigo once was, nor the ghost he became, or the aloof, scowling teen she re-met in high school. Not the broken man he was in the aftermath of Aizen, and more steady than he was in the aftermath of whatever the hell happened next, especially after Urahara was found.  For Tatsuki herself has known what she’s wanted to accomplish for years, but being the best female karate champion is one thing.  Now she’s looking at representing Japan in the Olympics, being supported by two wonderful women and a whole host of friends and teammates.

Ichigo achieved his goal of protecting those he cares about; she’s achieved her goal of being great.

Who’d’ve known, who’d’ve _thought_ , they’d come so far, back then -- two brats in a karate dojo?

* * *

Kudos and comments welcome!

~Fins


End file.
